The popularity and convenience of the Internet has resulted in the reinvention of traditional telephony services. These services are offered over a packet switched network with minimal or no cost to the users. IP (Internet Protocol) telephony, thus, have found significant success, particularly in the long distance market. In general, IP telephony, which is also referred to as Voice-over-IP (VOIP), is the conversion of voice information into data packets that are transmitted over an IP network. Telecommunication service providers are thus challenged to integrate VOIP technology and services in their existing network. Because of the engineering constraints of legacy systems and protocols, the migration to new platforms can result in inefficient use of network resources.
Specifically, one area of concern for the service providers is the efficient use of trunks from an IP telephony gateway to a Class 5 switch. In the hierarchical scheme of traditional telephony switching, Class 5 switches are deployed to communicate directly with telephone subscribers. Conventionally, the utilization of the trunks between the gateway and the Class 5 switch has been poor, in large part because every customer requires a dedicated trunk. As a result, even if the particular customer is not utilizing the trunk, no other user can, thereby “wasting” capacity. Additionally, the provisioning process of a new trunk can be manually intensive.
Another concern is that conventional telephony signaling, such as Channel Associated Signaling (CAS) (in-band signaling) is inflexible. Notably, calling party number information cannot be relayed under this signaling protocol. This limitation significantly hinders service adoption, as typical users are accustom to such features as Caller-ID to screen their calls.
Therefore, there is a need for an efficient trunking approach. There is also a need to preserve a standard architecture to promote deployment of network services, while minimizing system complexity and cost.